Month: March 2018

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New York firefighters turn out for the funeral of Thomas Phelan on Tuesday

When Thomas Phelan and Keith Young died within a day of each other last week, it was as a result of cancer, from which both had been suffering.

But the underlying cause of the firefighters’ deaths was the event which they both witnessed up close 17 years earlier: the 11 September attack on New York.

Phelan and Young’s names will not be added to the official tally of 2,977 people killed in the attacks, which also targeted the Pentagon and a plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Their deaths were, however, a result of what happened at the World Trade Center that September morning.

According to records maintained by the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York (UFANYC) union, theirs were the 172nd and 173rd deaths of firefighters to have occurred because of 9/11-related illnesses, and the sixth and seventh so far this year.

Another former New York firefighter, Paul Tokarski, died of what was called a “WTC-related illness” on 10 March.

Inevitability, sadly, their deaths will not be the last.

About 400,000 people are believed to have been exposed to toxic contaminants, or suffered injury or trauma in lower Manhattan that day, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The president of the UFANYC told the BBC that roughly one in eight firefighters who were at Ground Zero have since come down with cancer.

Image copyrightUFANYC

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Thomas Phelan, a firefighting marine pilot, was diagnosed with cancer only two months ago

Thomas Phelan was not working for the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) on 9/11, but played a critical role that stood him in good stead for his later career.

At the time, he was working as a pilot for the tourist ferry service running between Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

Soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center took place, all transport to and from Manhattan was shut down. Bridges, main roads and tunnels were closed, and people found themselves stranded on Manhattan, with no evacuation plan in place.

What happened next was a mass evacuation by boat that was larger even than what happened in Dunkirk during World War Two.

About 500,000 people are estimated to have been taken to safety by boat in only nine hours – the largest evacuation in New York City’s history.

Over several hours, Phelan carried hundreds of passengers from Manhattan to New Jersey, and transported first responders and supplies close to the ruins of the World Trade Center.

“When everybody was trying to get away, Thomas got that boat in position to help and evacuate,” his friend Bryan Lang told ny1.com. “And what’s great is that he never talked about it. You would never ever know what Thomas did.”

Many of the mariners who took part in the evacuation have since fallen ill – Phelan among them.

He stopped working for the Statue of Liberty ferry in May 2003 and joined the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), eventually making his way back on to the water as a pilot on board a firefighting boat.

Phelan, who was 45, was diagnosed with lung cancer only two months ago, not long after running his best marathon time. He died on Friday 16 March, and hundreds of firefighters lined the streets of the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Sunset Park for his funeral on Tuesday.

Gerard Fitzgerald, the president of the firefighters’ union the UFANYC, said Phelan, a friend for more than 25 years, was “a very talented, very nice, good-hearted guy”.

Among others to pay tribute was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said Phelan’s “heroism saved hundreds of lives”.

Keith Young joined the FDNY in 1998 and was stationed in Midwood, Brooklyn on the day of the attacks, when 343 firefighters were killed.

He joined the rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero, which went on for nine months afterwards.

While no emergency workers died during the recovery efforts, working in Ground Zero soon took its toll. The first 9/11-related death of a firefighter registered after the disaster is that of Gary Celentani, who took his own life 14 months after losing many of his close friends.

Many others, like Young, were struck down with cancer attributed to the effects of being at the site.

He first fell ill in December 2015, three years after his wife Beth died of breast cancer aged 47, and underwent surgery to remove a large tumour from his pelvis.

Image copyrightKaley Young

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Keith Young was a celebrated chef as well as a firefighter

After his treatment, he retired from duty, but died aged 53 on Saturday 17 March.

Among the main illnesses treated are chronic coughs, asthma, cancers and depression.

In January 2011, the Zadroga Act – named after a police officer who died of a lung disease – was signed into law, authorising a fund for monitoring, treatment and compensation for 9/11 survivors. So far, close to $3.3bn has been paid out.

New York’s Committee for Occupational Safety & Health says that about 6,000 of the 9/11 first responders are now living with cancer, with thousands more suffering breathing problems or mental health issues.

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Cancer cases after the World Trade Center attack could be set to rise

Gerard Fitzgerald, of the firefighters’ union the UFANYC, told the BBC that of the 10,000 active firefighters and 6,000 retirees who attended Ground Zero on or after 9/11, about 2,000 had gone on to suffer some form of cancer.

Home to the world’s tallest building, Dubai is a city built upon the concept of bigger being better. On the surface, everything is shiny, cutting edge, and meant to show that Dubai is progressive.

At the same time, the culture is very much steeped in tradition.

When it comes to food, the marriage of this nouveau, extravagant ideation with the city’s culturally rich backdrop is a winning one. The combination of Dubai’s centuries-old recipes and food preparation techniques with access to the freshest and highest-quality ingredients results in extraordinary cuisine.

The newly constructed Dubai Waterfront Market is an example of the traditional and the modern synchronizing perfectly. The market, massive and bright, is packed with high quality and mostly local foods. Much of its seafood selection was pulled from Dubai’s nearby waters only a day before coming to market.

The access to local food is a culinary win.

One of the many helpful fishmongers directed me to an area where my purchase was cleaned and fileted to my liking. Afterward, I crossed to one of the many restaurants at the rear of the market to have my retail “catch” freshly prepared.

In addition to the market’s extensive variety of fish, there are wonderful areas dedicated to meat, poultry, produce, and dried goods and spices. I found myself staring at more than 50 varieties of dates from all over the Arab world. I left with 10 pounds of them—a new addiction that is terribly frustrating to feed back home, since nothing remotely similar exists in the United States.

A Bodybuilder’s Nutritional Paradise

In general, the food in Dubai is as close to being perfect for a bodybuilder as I’ve ever seen. There is plenty of protein everywhere. Lamb and seafood are abundant. And the foods are prepared with a liberal use of digestion-friendly spices, which allowed me to easily eat very large quantities without any discomfort.

Additionally impressive was the variety and unique preparation of vegetable-based salads. And, of course, in the Middle East rice is everywhere, and it’s steamed to perfection. Pairing proteins with great vegetable sides and clean, simple carbs made me feel as though I could eat almost nonstop without repercussion.

Even my hotel featured great food. I was amazed by the spread offered each night for dinner: braised lamb falling off the bone, chicken livers, fresh fish, steamed rice, and a seemingly endless variety of freshly prepared vegetable salads.

When I asked the hotel manager to have a list of food prepared and delivered to my room each morning, he responded: “This is no problem. Let me get the chef. Tell him what you want him to make.” How’s that for accommodating?

I have never before eaten so much clean, high-quality, high-protein food while traveling, and still felt so good.

In the summer of 1937 a nine-month-old girl was hidden, with her hands tied, in a blackberry bush in southern England. She was found by sheer chance by a family of holidaymakers. Now 80, Anthea Ring has spent most of her life wondering why she was left to die and who her parents were. Thanks to a leap forward in genetic genealogy she finally has some answers.

Jane Dodd was tired. The 11-year-old was walking over the South Downs with her family on a bright August day. Ahead were her parents Arthur and Margaret and her older sister Elizabeth. Every year they travelled from south London for a fortnight’s holiday in Worthing. Her father would insist on an invigorating walk in the afternoons. It was still hot, even at 6pm. There was no shade up here, just grassland, gorse and blackberry bushes. Suddenly her mother stopped.

“There’s a baby up here,” she said.

Her father turned around.

“Of course there isn’t, there’s no-one up here,” he said.

“I haven’t had five children and not know what a baby sounds like,” her mother replied.

The family started searching through the scrubland. Minutes later they found a blonde child hidden deep in a blackberry bush. She was wearing a pink dress and looked about one year old. She had scratches and insect bites. Her hands were tied tightly in front of her.

Image copyrightJane Dodd

Image caption
The Dodd family on a trip to Worthing, around the time they found the baby girl

Nine years later, Anthea Ring was playing with her friend, Peter, on the road outside her Surrey home. But an argument began and she threatened to go and complain to her mother.

“She’s not your mother, you’re adopted,” he replied.

Shocked, Anthea ran home and that evening her parents sat her down for a talk.

“They told me I was left on the doorstep of Worthing Hospital when I was a newborn baby,” Anthea says.

“They had lost a daughter, Veronica, three years before, and decided to adopt me.”

Anthea was very excited by the news. Adopted children were usually the heroines in books she devoured about Swiss chalet schools.

“I remember thinking I could tell my friends at school the next day,” she says.

“It didn’t cross my mind to think about who my birth parents were. I was obviously so secure.”

She was doted on by her parents, sleeping in a warm back bedroom in winter and a cool front bedroom in summer.

Her adoptive father, Douglas Shannan, worked for the Ministry of Food and Anthea remembers going on trips with him to inspect egg-grading stations.

“He was a very kind man, I loved going out with him,” she says.

Image copyrightAnthea Ring

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Anthea found out she was adopted from a friend on her street

She describes her mother Margaret as warm and friendly but quite nervous due to the loss of her first daughter. Margaret was intelligent but hadn’t been able to follow her sister to Girton College, Cambridge, as the family couldn’t afford it.

Margaret wanted Anthea to train as a teacher but she wanted to get a job at the first opportunity. At 15 she went to work for the Bourne and Hollingsworth department store in Oxford Street. A few years later she trained to be a nurse in Bath, where she met her future husband Francis. Two children, Jonathan and Christine, followed.

One day in 1961, Anthea took baby pictures of Christine over to her parents’ house. They said she was the spitting image of Anthea as a baby.

“Then my father said to my mother, ‘You’ll have to show her now Peggy,’ and she went upstairs,” Anthea recalls.

Margaret returned with a newspaper clipping, with a picture of a baby. Anthea asked who it was.

Anthea learned she had been discovered by Arthur Dodd on a hillside near Worthing on 26 August 1937. Scotland Yard had launched an attempted murder investigation and made a nationwide appeal for information, but never discovered how she came to be there or who her parents were.

Margaret wrote to the hospital offering her a home, after reading about her case in the newspaper.

Several other people offered to take Anthea, including a Belgian diplomat, but the Shannans were chosen because they had experience raising a child – Veronica, who had been knocked over by a car when she was seven.

“My mother said that when they walked in to the ward I came to the end of the cot and put my arms out,” Anthea says.

“They paid the juvenile court 11 shillings and sixpence and took me home to Surrey.”

After receiving this shocking news, Anthea went home and cried. She told her husband but they decided not to tell their children and she put it to the back of her mind.

Image copyrightAnthea Ring

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Anthea with her two eldest children, Jonathan and Christine

Decades passed, and Anthea’s children had children of their own. Her grandson, Aaron, was also a spitting image of Anthea as a baby and it made her wonder once again who she was. In 1994 she joined a group called Norcap, which helped adopted adults find out more about their past.

A member of the group suggested she write to the police in Worthing to see if they had any records. And even though 57 years had passed, the Police Superintendent for West Sussex was able to put her in touch with a retired policeman who had worked the case. He was known as Mac.

“He told me he’d been on crowd control in Worthing that day as they’d had a famous film star at the cinema. He got called back after I was found and was put on door-to-door enquiries,” Anthea says.

“He said he’d carried my photo in his wallet for years and would produce it if he thought someone might know me, but no-one ever did.”

Mac was convinced Anthea was not a local child, as it would have been impossible to keep such a secret in a small community. He thought she could have been brought on the train from London.

Their meeting was reported in the local paper, after Mac told the local retired policeman’s association about it. The wider press got wind of the story and Anthea was once again the focus of national news.

Weeks later she received a letter simply addressed to Anthea, with the name of a local TV show she had featured on. It was from Elizabeth Dodd – the eldest daughter of the family who had found her on the Downs.

Image copyrightJane Davey

Image caption
Jane and Elizabeth around the time they found baby Anthea

“She said I’d ruined her holiday all those years ago because she had wanted her parents to adopt me and they wouldn’t,” Anthea says.

Elizabeth told her the family had been returning from a walk when her mother had heard her cries. They had taken her to the nearest house but it didn’t have a phone so they carried her on to the big farmhouse in the village of Sompting.

“They were having a tennis party and passed me around the dining room,” Anthea says. “One of the farmer’s daughters called the police and I was taken to hospital.”

Elizabeth has since died, but her younger sister Jane, now 92, still remembers that day. She says the family was walking along the side of Cissbury Ring when her mother heard Anthea’s cries.

“My mother and sister did everything while I held my father’s hand,” she says. “That night I was very frightened as I thought we’d taken someone’s baby and they would be cross with us.”

Image copyrightJane Davey

Image caption
Jane, 92, with Anthea, 80. They first met on the South Downs when Jane was 11 and Anthea was a baby

She remembers that her parents called the hospital the next day and were told the baby had been called Ann.

Anthea also received a letter from Betty, a nurse who had looked after her at Worthing Hospital.

“Apparently I was put in a cot in the sister’s office. Betty realised I needed a name when she handed over at the end of her shift. She called me Ann, as it was her favourite name,” Anthea says.

Anthea stayed at Worthing Hospital for six months while the police investigated. Her only injuries were to the skin of her wrists, where she had been bound.

“Apparently the ward sister used to take me out in a pram and walk up and down the front. I’ve always loved the sound of seagulls,” Anthea says.

Image copyrightAnthea Ring

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Anthea with two doctors from Worthing Hospital

Although Anthea now knew far more about how she was found and cared for, she was no closer to finding her parents. Her only clue was Mac’s hunch that she had come from London.

There were no further breakthroughs until 2012, when Anthea, then 75, decided to take a DNA test.

This revealed her ethnicity was 92% Irish and matched her with some distant cousins in America and Ireland.

One cousin called Joan, living in North Carolina, asked relatives in her extended family tree to take tests. This revealed Joan was linked to Anthea through her father’s maternal side. They came from County Mayo in Ireland.

“I met Joan in 2013. She was the first blood relative I had ever met so it was quite something,” Anthea says.

Two years later she matched with a woman who worked at Dublin University, called Ann. Ann didn’t match with Joan, which suggested she was from the other side of Anthea’s family. Ann’s family came from County Galway.

By this time Anthea had joined online communities for adoptees and foundlings and in April 2016 she was contacted by genetic genealogist Julia Bell, who offered to help.

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Julia and Anthea sift through the records

Bell had managed to track down her own American GI grandfather using DNA and genealogical research. She had then started helping other people look for their relatives in her spare time.

“Knowing who her family was changed my mother’s life,” Bell says. “I believe everyone deserves to know who they really are.”

Anthea and Bell met at Paddington Station, where Anthea told her everything she had found out up to that point.

Bell encouraged Anthea to take some further DNA tests with different companies, knowing that millions more people had joined DNA databases since Anthea tested in 2012. This provided further distant cousin matches.

“We then used genealogy to build trees to find possible common ancestors and then brought the lines down,” Bell says.

“It was a lot of work because families could have 12 children and there was a lot of intermarriage. This could make people seem like closer matches than they actually were.”

Image copyrightNLS

After months of work with the help of genealogist Angie Bush, Bell had narrowed down the search. She was confident one parent was a Coyne from County Galway and the other was an O’Donnell from County Mayo.

She was considering the seven daughters of a John O’Donnell when things began to fall into place.

“I was looking at the youngest daughter, Ellen O’Donnell, who was born in 1911,” she says.

Irish amateur historian Catherine Corless had told Bell that Ellen’s official name would be a Saint’s name – and baptismal records revealed this was Helena.

Then came the eureka moment.

“Earlier on I had ordered records of illegitimate births in England and Ireland in 1936. I had come across an unmarried mother called Lena O’Donnell but dismissed it.

“Suddenly I thought: ‘Of course, Lena could be Helena!'”

Corless found out Lena O’Donnell had got married in Ireland in 1945, seven years after Anthea had been found, and had given birth to four more children. She tracked down one of the sons who agreed to have a DNA test. In April 2017 the test confirmed Bell’s hunch. He was Anthea’s half-brother.

“I was sitting in the garden in the sun when Julia rang,” Anthea says.

“She told me my birth mother was Lena O’Donnell. I was delighted.”

Anthea’s birth certificate revealed she was born on 20 November 1936, just five days after the date her parents picked for her birthday. Her birth name was Mary Veronica.

Lena had been moving between digs in Cricklewood when Anthea was born at St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington. She gave her occupation as a machine operator at a telephone factory.

She was taken in by a charity for unmarried mothers called the Home for Guardian Angels after leaving hospital on 7 December. However, she didn’t stay long.

A baptismal record from 18 December reveals Lena moved with her baby to another home called Devon Nook in Chiswick. This Roman Catholic home was unusual for the time as it encouraged the mothers to look after their babies and to keep them if they could.

It’s the last known record of Lena O’Donnell until she appears on an electoral roll in 1939 back in Cricklewood. Mary Veronica O’Donnell disappears altogether.

“What happened after Lena left Devon Nook?” Bell asks, rhetorically. “I don’t think she was the one who abandoned Anthea. I think she did a brave thing and decided to try and keep the baby.”

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Lena O’Donnell was staying at Devon Nook when Anthea was baptised at four weeks old

Had Lena wanted to abandon her baby there were easier ways to do it in a big city. An article in the Daily Herald from 28 August 1937 reported 12 abandoned babies were lying in London hospitals.

“They have all been found in the last 10 weeks in railway carriages, churches, station waiting rooms, public parks and on the doorsteps of private houses.”

A search for the mothers of 15 recently abandoned children had only succeeded in two cases, it added.

So how did Anthea end up on the South Downs? One theory is that Lena left Anthea with a foster mother while she went out to work. Newspaper reports from the time reveal some foster mothers offered to get children in their care adopted for a fee. They would then sell the child to a couple or another broker.

An article from 1932 in the Gloucester Citizen, said the traffic in babies was “becoming one of the greater evils of London”.

A director of the National Children Adoption Association is quoted as saying: “Americans are often willing to pay a high price for fair-headed babies, especially with curls. They call them the pure Anglo-Saxon type… At present they are bought and sold more easily than motor cars.”

It’s possible an exchange of the fair-haired Anthea had been planned near Worthing, and that it somehow went wrong on the day.

“I may never know what happened to me but I’ve come to terms with it,” Anthea says.

Image copyrightAlamy

Image caption
A bridleway leading down from Cissbury Ring, near where Anthea was left

At that point her father had still not been identified, but Bell had narrowed down the search to six brothers. Four of them – Michael, Martin, Patrick and Phillip Coyne – had been working as labourers in London in 1936.

Martin’s daughter agreed to be tested and the results revealed she was a first cousin. This confirmed one of the other three would be Anthea’s father. Michael’s granddaughter Anne Marie was tested and the result also ruled Michael out.

This left just Patrick and Phillip, but as neither had direct descendants the only thing that could prove paternity would be a sample of their DNA – hard to find years after their death.

However, Anthea was also in touch with a first cousin called Dot, who was the daughter of one of Patrick and Phillip’s sisters.

“I was telling Dot about the problem when she said: ‘Well I’ve still got letters that Patrick sent me,'” Anthea says.

The letters, still in their original stamped envelopes, had been sent from England to the US about 30 years earlier.

Bell approached David Nicholson of Living DNA. He said his company could use a recently developed forensic test to capture Patrick’s DNA from the saliva left when he licked the stamps and envelope.

Last year they took a sample of Anthea’s saliva and compared it to small sections cut from the letters.

Image copyrightLiving DNA

Image caption
David Nicholson reveals the results of the DNA test to Anthea and Julia Bell

The DNA in the first three samples was too degraded to use. However on the fourth, Nicholson said “we hit on more than enough DNA”.

“I was so happy as I’d been looking for my father for 29 years,” Anthea says.

Anthea isn’t currently in contact with her mother’s relatives, although she says her half-brother who took the DNA test “wishes me well”. However, she has enjoyed getting to know her father’s side of the family.

“They told me Patrick was a very lively man, the life and soul of the party,” Anthea says.

“We don’t know if Patrick ever knew about me. He never married and once told Dot it was because he liked his independence and didn’t want to be tied down.”

Now 80 and living near Bath, Anthea says she is grateful to both Lena and Patrick for the DNA she inherited from them, as she is pretty healthy for someone of her age. But her long journey to learn about her origins hasn’t changed how she remembers her adoptive parents.

Last summer she had a family party with her children, grandchildren and cousins.

“I told them: ‘My mother was Helena McDonnell but my family were Margaret and Douglas Shannan.'”

Julia Bell would like to hear from anyone who passed through Devon Nook Mother and Babies home in the 1930s and 1940s. She can be contacted through her website

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Robin King, 74, has spent most of his life wondering why he was left in a box on London’s Oxford Street. Thanks to DNA, and the dogged detective work of one of his daughters, he finally has some answers.

Once upon a time, when I was smaller than I am now but looking to get as big as possible, I lived off of tuna and potatoes almost exclusively for a period of years. That, plus a scoop of protein powder in my morning cereal, was my muscle-building master plan.

Did it work? Sure, to a certain degree. But today, I know that’s not the only way to split your sleeves without breaking the bank.

When I get asked by aspiring bodybuilders how to grow without dough—which is pretty much every single day—here’s what I tell them to put in their shopping carts.

1. Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a staple food, and for good reason. You can buy it in bulk at any big supermarket—that much you know. Oatmeal can go in pretty much every meal, it’s easy to travel with, and it plays nicely with both protein and fat sources.

For example, you can mix oats with eggs or egg whites, which is a classic bodybuilder meal. If growth is the goal, though, make sure you use whole eggs. Why? The yolks bring plenty of healthy fats and more calories, both of which you need to add muscle mass.

Personally, I also like to mix oatmeal with some casein. I’ll put it in a blender or shaker cold, or I’ll cook the oats first, and then add a scoop of casein to it. Voila, there’s a meal.

If you’re looking for one more thing to add to this muscle-building treat, make it nut butters. Like egg yolks, these are a great source of healthy fats to help support hormone production, and to push you into the calorie surplus you need to build muscle. Almond butter, peanut butter, or just plain nuts like cashews or hazelnuts—they all work.

2. Rice cakes

People tend to associate rice cakes with wanting to lose weight, but they’re a great not-so-secret weapon that bodybuilders have been using to grow for decades. They’re a simple, clean, and easy to get source of calories that pairs well with other great growth foods.

Here’s the perfect combo to put on a rice cake: more nut butter—I’m obviously a big fan—and natural fruit jams or preserves. Don’t go full cheapo on the jam, since there are some that are pure processed junk. It should contain as much fruit as possible, and just a little sugar.

You may think that almond butter or other nut butters don’t qualify as “budget” foods, but since they pretty much last forever, you can buy in bulk and use it over time. Look for deals, shop the Costcos of the world, and stock up.

Get this combo right, and you’ll get plenty of healthy fats, nutrient-rich fruit, and just enough healthy, natural sugars to power your workouts and keep your carb stores up where they should be.

3. Canned fish

As I said earlier, tuna is what I used to live on, and it’s a staple food I still recommend today. But you can overdo it, and there is some fear of mercury levels.

The answer isn’t to avoid it, but rather to make it just one of the canned fish you eat. You can’t go wrong with canned salmon, especially wild caught, since it’s another great source of healthy fats. Both white albacore and chunk light tuna, which is usually made from a smaller fish named skipjack (smaller means less mercury risk), are also solid options.

That, plus some potatoes or rice, and you’ve got a meal you can grow on. Even better, you could add some salad greens in there, along with low-calorie sauces like hot sauces and mustard or soy sauce.

Here’s another idea: Cook some rice or egg noodles, then fry them lightly in a bit of coconut oil. Crack in a couple of whole eggs and stir-fry the whole thing until the eggs are cooked. Let it cool, then add the canned fish when it’s time to eat.

One other advantage of egg noodles? They’re actually really tasty. That matters! Remember, to grow you’ll need to eat a lot. Making good-tasting food can only make that easier.

4. Dried fruit and nuts

Sure, these are technically two foods, but together, they make one hell of a snack. Remember: meals aren’t all you need to grow. You need snacks, too!

Back in the day when I was just an up-and-coming trainer looking to add mass, I’d carry a fanny pack, or bum bag, full of nuts and dried fruit to snack on between meeting with clients. I’d probably sneak a few during the session, too.

Nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, and cashews will all give you extra calories to help you keep in a surplus. But avoid the sugary versions. Raw is best, since you know exactly what you’re taking in.

Buy them in bulk, keep them with you at all times, and train hard, and you’ll be primed for growth!

Flexible dieting is not a new approach, but it’s still one that receives pushback. Old-school competitors and hardcore meal preppers turn their noses up at flexible dieters because this “if it fits your macros” (IIFYM) approach allows, even encourages, eating unhealthy foods as part of a cutting phase. To detractors, this concept of fitting cheat foods into a meal plan just seems like, well, cheating.

But is this perception backed by science? Bill Campbell, Ph.D., CSCS, an associate professor of exercise science and director of the Performance & Physique Enhancement Laboratory at the University of South Florida, and his research team decided to put flexible dieting to the test.

“To the best of my knowledge, we did the first study in resistance-trained individuals with this flexible dieting paradigm,” explains Campbell.

Here are the five key takeaways from his team’s research to help you take a smarter, no-BS approach to flexible dieting.

1. It’s As Healthy As You Make It

One of the biggest criticisms of flexible dieting is that it’s not as healthy as stricter meal planning. After all, you’re allowed to have cheat foods as long as they fit within your macronutrient ratio for each day—hence the IIFYM acronym. But just because someone eats a Snickers bar one day doesn’t mean their entire diet is unhealthy.

According to Campbell, flexible dieting is a more useful educational tool for making smart food decisions than tracking calories alone, and the experience of flexible dieting may lead to greater long-term success.

“If you look at just calories, a donut might have the same total calories as a chicken sandwich, but the macros are completely different,” explains Campbell. “I think everybody would benefit from tracking macros for a period of their life. You learn so much about making food choices.”

Flexible dieting is as healthy or unhealthy as you want it to be, and if you’re in a strict diet phase, your macros won’t allow you to pig out on too many naughty foods, anyway.

Campbell’s research shows the real value of this approach is how it teaches you to make healthier food choices while still fitting in less-healthy options every now and then. Tracking macros through flexible dieting is a great way to learn healthy habits without feeling deprived.

2. It Works Better When You Lift

The appeal of flexible dieting is obvious. In theory, you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight. Many take this concept one step further and start to believe resistance training is not as important for someone sticking to their macros, because that person is already dieting for better body composition.

Campbell and his team made it their goal to specifically study the effects of flexible dieting on a trained population, and the results were clear.

“If your goal is to lose weight, flexible dieting by itself is going to work great,” says Campbell. “But, you’re not going to change your body shape without resistance training. Without it, you’ll just be a smaller, puffier version of yourself.”

Resistance training makes all the difference when you’re already lean and trying to go from a good physique to a great physique. “Lifting weights changes the contours of your physique,” explains Campbell. “It’s what will maintain your muscle mass during a diet.”

The bottom line is that flexible dieting needs to be paired with resistance training if you truly want to change your physique.

3. The Scale May Not Change—And That’s OK

“I’m biased because I’m a scientist,” says Campbell. “But I would say to get more data than just the scale. Your physique may be drastically improving if you’re gaining muscle and losing fat, but the scale may not change at all.”

When you start tracking macros instead of calories, you’re putting the ideal ratio of protein to carbohydrate to fat in your body, which can have a dramatic effect on your body composition. Hitting those ideal ratios encourages your body to build lean muscle and burn body fat.

This is precisely why the scale may not change at all: You could be adding muscle at a rate that nearly matches your fat loss, so the net change would be almost zero.

By emphasizing macronutrients over merely counting calories, flexible dieting could dramatically transform your physique without significantly changing the numbers on the scale.

So embrace the idea that the scale might not change and use other methods (e.g., tape measure, calipers, bioelectrical impedance analysis) to collect more data and make sure flexible dieting is working for you.

4. Protein Matters Most

In his eight-week study looking at the effects of high versus low-to-moderate protein intake for female athletes, Campbell and his team found that while the high-protein group gained 4.5 pounds of muscle mass, the low-protein group gained only about 1.5 pounds—despite both groups following identical training programs.

The members of both groups were told not to restrict their carbohydrates or fats. In fact, participants were told not to restrict their calories at all.

Rather than account for the added calories in their diet by cutting fats or carbohydrates, the high-protein group ended up eating about 425 extra calories every day for the duration of the eight-week study. But instead of gaining fat, this group lost more body fat than the low-protein group, which was consuming fewer calories!

Campbell dubbed this finding the “protein aberration.” It seems that as long as protein intake stays high, those few extra calories each day will not lead to increased body fat. You may not believe it yourself, but the results don’t lie.

5. A Better Long-Term Solution

The big appeal of flexible dieting is that it is so much easier than following a strict meal plan—and now it looks like it might be a better option long term as well.

Although the results showed no significant advantage to flexible dieting over rigid meal planning during the course of the eight-week study, Campbell made a surprising observation afterward.

“The really intriguing part came during the post-diet phase,” he explains. “After 10 weeks of not doing anything, the group that was previously flexible dieting actually gained a significant amount of lean body mass as compared to the rigid group.”

When it comes to long-term weight management and body transformation, adherence is key. It seems that, though flexible dieters show similar results to their rigid-plan counterparts in the short term, they have the advantage of better adherence in the long-term, and that may very well make all the difference.

Yes, some people will do much better with a more structured meal plan, but for those who can’t stay on track but hate the thought of a strict meal plan, flexible dieting might be the solution.

Listen To Podcast Episode #38

Episode 38: Straight talk on Protein and more with Dr. Jose Antonio. The CEO and co-founder of the International Society of Sports Nutrition stopped by Bodybuilding.com to talk about his research into high-protein diets, and share the current state of the research on protein dosage, creatine, glutamine, and plenty more.

Publish Date: Monday, March 5, 2018

Behind The Scenes Photo:

Behind The Scenes Video:

Ep. isode 38 Highlights & Transcript ▼

Highlights:

The RDA on protein, aka “enough to feed my hamster.”

What he views as the real “baseline” for athletes

How he decided to start studying truly high protein intake levels

What they observed in bone health, body composition, and others

“Don’t change your diet. Just throw a whole bunch of protein on top.”

About “protein is bad for your kidneys”: “It’s like saying, ‘Hey, I live in south Florida. I sweat all the time. Hey, my sweat glands are working hard. Maybe it’s bad for my sweat glands.'”

Why there is such resistance to high-protein diets in popular press

“Protein sensitivity” in aging populations

The Antonio rule: “If it helps or has a neutral effect, just frickin’ try it.”

His approach to caffeine (he’s a highly caffeinated guy)

On clinical doses vs. “dustings”

His retort to the deniers of the so-called anabolic window: “Why not do the shake immediately post-workout? Does not eating ever help you?”

“The right way to look at it is, well, if the anabolic window is that long, take advantage of every frickin’ part of the window.”

On protein upper limits per meal: “Imagine you’ve been starving for two days. You finally catch a deer. You want to eat, and your caveman buddy says, ‘You know what? 30 grams of protein, that’s it. Stop.’ And you’re hungry. You just want to eat and eat and eat. You want the whole deer leg. It makes sense, from a biological standpoint, that your body can take in and utilize a lot of protein, certainly a lot more than 30 grams.”

Why he loves creatine and thinks “it may actually be healthier than taking a vitamin.”

Why he’s still a believer in glutamine

On branched-chains: Maybe only for “the top one percent”

Transcript:

Nick Collias: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a most nutritious episode of The Bodybuilding.com Podcast. I’m Nick Collias, she’s Heather Eastman, and we’re happy to have you listening, as always. And we’re happy to have Dr. Jose Antonio visiting us, as well, from far away Florida, coming all the way to Idaho, the first time, I’m assuming?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: This is my first time in the beautiful city of Boise, although it’s kind of gray. I’m used to sunshine, palm trees, beaches, dolphins.

Nick: This is the way it should be. The sun is the enemy.

Heather Eastman: You’re in the northwest now.

Nick: Dr. Antonio is the CEO and co-founder of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, also professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, yes?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That is correct.

Nick: Author of a wide variety of research papers on nutrition, supplementation, and one of the loudest voices out there speaking in defense of protein and a high-protein diet.

Heather: Yeah.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Am I that loud?

Nick: Loud. I thought you had a shirt on that says “Defenders of Protein.”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: It says P.

Nick: Just P?

Heather: Just P.

Nick: Got the P shirt on. People who read Bodybuilding.com regularly, they love their macros, we hear in the comments, right? This is a macro-conscious group, generally. When you talk about a high-protein diet, what are you talking about … a high-protein diet?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s a good question. I love the fact that people obsess over macros, and particularly protein. Now, what’s interesting about protein is, as you well know, you’ve probably interviewed 5,000 people, 10,000.

Nick: Easily.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: The RDA for protein is what, Heather?

Heather: .8 grams per …

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Wow. She gets an A plus. I like that.

Nick: I was gonna say that.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: 0.8 grams per kilo per day, right? Which is enough, I would say, to feed my hamster.

Nick: What is that per pound?

Heather: A kilo is-

Nick: That’s-

Heather: … 2.2 pounds?

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Very good. She paid attention in science class. I like that. 0.8 grams per kilo is the recommended dietary allowance or daily allowance. We’ve actually known for probably four or five decades that the RDA is way too low. And, in fact, what’s interesting is, clinicians seem to stick to this RDA and maybe even a little bit above it. But what’s interesting is, if you watch athletes and what they do and how they train and how they eat, they all eat well above the RDA. And really, the sticking point was this: What happens to your body if you eat well above the RDA? Does it have any health consequences? Is it harmful? Is it bad for your kidneys? And so people have argued about, “Well, when does high-protein intake become high?” And I’ve always defined it as, you gotta hit at least 1 gram per pound or 2.2 grams per kilo, and once you get above that, then we’ll define it as high. But really, to me, the baseline intake for all athletes should be about 1 gram per pound or 2.2 grams per kilo. Anything below that, I define as moderate intake.

And that applies, actually, not just to bodybuilders and strength/power athletes, but it also applies to endurance athletes. Of course, if you don’t work out, then none of this applies.

Nick: Now, somebody who maybe doesn’t really like counting or calculating their macros, doesn’t really like bothering with calories, if they were just going to bother with one thing and say, “All right. You know what? I’m only going to … I’m going to focus on eating one gram per pound of body weight, or 20 grams every meal, or whatever it is, and just let the rest of my diet fall where it may. Let the chips fall where they may,” what could they do with just that approach?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, actually, one of the things I tell my students is that nutrition shouldn’t be about mathematics. I mean, you shouldn’t have to count carbs, fat, this-

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … and that, and what’s the percent of … am I hitting a 40, 30, 30? To be honest, I think it’s all a waste of time. Because ultimately, even for high-end athletes, if you focus on the one number, and that one number is how many grams of protein do you get per day, if you weigh 200 pounds, aim for 200. If you hit 250, great. If you hit 150, that’s not so great, maybe you should bump it up the next day. And when you hit your protein needs per day, what you should do is end up back-filling carbs and fat. And typically what happens is this: Let’s say I work with endurance athletes. I say, “Okay, you weigh 150 pounds, you’re a triathlete, I want you to get at least 150 grams of protein, try to spread it out throughout the day, make sure you get some protein after you work out. Backfill the rest of your diet with carbs and fat.” And typically, with endurance athletes, they eat so much volume of food that it’s not a problem getting the carbs and fat. Bodybuilders are kind of a tricky … well, not tricky.

Heather: We’re special.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: They’re odd in the sense that … in fact, if you ask some bodybuilders, they say, “Well, we’re not doing a sport. This isn’t a sport. We just are up there in our underwear”-

Nick: It’s a lifestyle.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Exactly, it’s a lifestyle where you pose in your underwear. For them, it’s tricky because they’re not really performing a sport. I always ask people, “What’s your goal? Are you trying to run faster? You trying to lift more weights?” But if the goal is to look prettier, it’s much harder to define the endpoint, because what the hell’s looking prettier? Well, usually it’s you gain muscle, you lose fat. Well, how do you gain muscle, lose fat? Well, to gain muscle, lift weights. To lose fat, eat better. And for bodybuilding, because you’re not performing a task and you’re not being judged on a task, typically the way they eat is not the way a performance athlete would eat.

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: For instance, if you’re a linebacker in the NFL, these guys weigh 250, 260 pounds. They’re actually built like bodybuilders, but they gotta move fast. The way they eat should be different than the guy standing onstage who’s ripped at 250 pounds. Bodybuilding nutrition, or what I call physique nutrition, is much different than what I like. I actually prefer sports nutrition, because you’re training for a goal that’s measurable.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … I like the guy with the big pecs, or I like the girl with the big butt, or whatever.

Heather: Yes.

Nick: Now, that bodybuilder who may be listening to this, they probably heard that standard of one gram per pound of body weight, and they go, “That’s really low.”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Heather: Right.

Nick: That’s very low compared to some of the recommendations that have been in programs on our site over the years. What happens between one gram and two grams or 2-1/2 grams?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s a damn good … oh, I … can I say that?

Nick: Yes.

Heather: Hell, yeah. You can say whatever …

Nick: Say whatever the hell you want.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s a damn good question. Here’s why, because there’s only one human being on the planet who’s done research looking at super-high-protein diets. You know who that is? Me.

Nick: I thought so.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ah, see.

Heather: And we’re talking to him.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Now.

Nick: Felt like a trick question …

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: In fact, in fact one gram per pound is the baseline. That’s the minimal amount you should do. Now, I remember … this was four or five years ago, I had a conversation with one of my students, who happened to be a recreational bodybuilder. And just for shits and giggles … I can say that too, can’t I?

Nick: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Yeah. I said, “Hey, you seem to eat a lot. How much do you eat?” And he went through the Rolodex in his head, and he’s like, “Da, da, da, da, let me calculate. Oh, I eat about 300 grams of protein.” And I got my calculator out. I’m like, “You’re getting almost three grams per kilo. Wow, that’s … that’s a lot.”

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: And it prompted an idea in my head. I said, “How come no one’s ever done a study where you just get guys and girls who lift weights to eat a lot of protein?” It seemed simple, and I realize why no one did it. We embarked on the first study, where we had guys and girls who lifted weights consume two grams per pound. That’s 4.4 grams per kilo, which is a lot of eating.

Nick: How much of that was shakes?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: It’s almost all shakes.

Heather: I was gonna say, ’cause you wrote an article for us where you recommended trying to get as much protein as you could from whole food.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Oh, I still recommend that. But there’s a point where, once you eat enough whole food, you just don’t want to eat.

Nick: Just guzzling shakes.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: And what’s interesting … so we did, and I’ll get to that, we did the … it was two grams per pound or 4.4 grams per kilo. We did it for two months, or eight weeks, and we didn’t change their training. We were like, “Okay, don’t change your training. The goal is just to get a lot of protein.” And they had to do it through shakes, ’cause it is … I don’t want to say it’s impossible to do with food, but unless you sit at home and don’t have a job and you eat chicken all day-

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … it ain’t happening.

Nick: Set the alarm for 2:00 a.m.-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Exactly.

Nick: … and drink it. That’s the only…

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: You literally have to be a professional eater, which is nuts. All these guys were like … in fact, they all said they had to figure out how to put themselves on an eating schedule, meaning take a shake, just to hit the 4.4 grams per kilo. And what happened after eight weeks, when we tallied the data, I think we finished with 50 subjects, we found something interesting. The group that ate a lot of protein, they didn’t gain any weight, they didn’t gain any muscle, they didn’t gain any fat. Nothing happened, which is really interesting, and we can get into mechanisms if you want, get in that science stuff. But people were like, “Well, how can you eat that much protein and not get fat?” Well, there are things that happen to your body when you consume protein, but the key thing we found is that the upper limit, it seems, for protein intake needed for, let’s say, gaining lean body mass might be between two and 2.5 grams per kilo, which is a little over one gram per pound.

Now, is it a waste to do more than that? The answer to that is no, because you still utilize it, but it may not be utilized for building muscle. It’s utilized for other things. We are actually following up with a one-year study in trained women to see what happens when they consume about 2.8 to 2.9 grams per kilo per day, actually looking at their bones, ’cause one of the silly things clinicians always say is, “Oh, you eat a lot of protein, it’s bad for your bones.”

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: “It demineralizes.” It’s just a crock of shit, but they say it all the time, and I’m like, “Why would protein demineralize your bones?” And we actually are halfway through the study. We have six months of data. I actually presented it at a conference last week in Florida, and nothing. Female athletes can eat a lot of protein, and your bones are fine. It’s absolutely fine.

Nick: Should protein just be considered free calories?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ugh, should protein be free calories? Well, put it this way. It’s very difficult to get fat if the only thing you overfeed on is protein. And I think … at least, that’s what our data says, and other data, maybe not on such well-trained athletes, suggests the same thing. But I think what’s interesting about protein is that we all know about the thermic effect of feeding or food, your audience is quite well aware of that, but there’s also another thing that it might affect. It’s call NEAT, non-exercise-activity thermogenesis.
So, if you eat a lot of protein, maybe it causes you, for whatever reason, to just move. And we’re not talking formal exercise, we’re just talking movement. Non-exercise-activity thermogenesis could be fidgeting. It could be walking instead of standing. It could be taking the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator.

Nick: Be going like this because you have protein farts?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: It could be that. Hey, anytime you’re moving its non-exercise-activity thermogenesis. Put this way: Moving is always better than not moving, and it doesn’t have to be formal exercise.

Heather: Interesting.

Nick: When people say protein, you think whey protein or you think a powdered form of protein. Would that same thing apply to somebody who’s just taking in vegetable-based protein? I’m a big fan of a veggie protein shake, I have to say. It feels more like food. There’s actual fiber and nutrients and all those other things. Lot of them match up fairly well amino acid profile wise these days. Is it every bit as good when you think of it that way?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ok, vegetarian protein … we actually had one of our subjects was a vegetarian bodybuilder. He had to do six to eight shakes a day just to get his protein intake.

Heather: Just to get the protein.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I mean, I don’t know how you do that.

Nick: Right. Ooh, that’s a lot of shakes.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Even if you could do the whey and the casein, that’s just a lot of shakes. Is it doable? Yeah, it’s absolutely doable. However, when you do head-to-head studies of milk-based proteins particularly compared to vegetarian-based proteins, milk-based proteins always do better. However, you can make up for the lack of quality in vegetarian proteins by increasing volume. Put it this way, if you drink enough of it, it doesn’t matter. You’re getting plenty. But, I know I worked with a lot of smaller women, endurance athletes, who … their intake of food may not be quite adequate. The quality of protein they take in becomes critically important. But when you’re dealing with guys who eat volumes of food, it probably doesn’t matter ’cause they’re getting so much protein.

Nick: Ok… Go ahead.

Heather: Well, I was gonna say … I’m interested ’cause a lot of these newer bodybuilders, they’re really studying the science behind their macros. They get what protein does, and really … in your studies, did you take a look at how the other two macronutrients really interact with proteins, if you’re having protein in a high-fat meal or if you’re having protein in a high-carb meal? ‘Cause I hear a lot about people trying to really dial in the science. And that’s what makes bodybuilding an art and a science in some ways, that people are … they’re trying to really nail down this elusive …

Nick: The meal is such a thing.

Heather: Thing, you know?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: And actually, what you asked would make for a very complicated scientific study, and that’s why no one studies it. Really, the studies I did were quite simple. Don’t change your diet. We’re just gonna throw a ton of protein on top.

Heather: A ton of protein.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: When you start manipulating carbs, fat and protein, now you’re getting into an area where compliance becomes a huge issue in these studies. In fact, that’s why you rarely see studies on the ketogenic diet. Why? ‘Cause compliance is hard as hell. I mean, who wants to eat 70 percent fat? So all of these diet studies, I commend any scientist who wants to do this, because I wouldn’t do it. I mean, I call my studies high-protein-diet studies, but in fact, they’re really high-protein-supplementation studies. Now, when you’re looking at ratios of carbs, fat and protein … again, for bodybuilding because, as you mentioned, it’s really more of an art than a science … a lot of things will work for reducing body fat. To me, gaining muscle is more a function of training plus diet, whereas losing body fat is probably more a function of diet alone. That probably plays a more critical role.

And I’ll tell you this: If you take, let’s see, a low-fat, high-carb diet or a high-fat, low-carb diet and you make the protein intake identical, the fat loss will be identical. Protein is the key driver of fat loss. It’s not, “Well, I dropped my carbs,” or, “I dropped my fat.” It doesn’t matter if you drop your fat or carbs. It’s protein that’s the driver.

Heather: You don’t often see the low-protein diet.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: So… Exactly! You’re right. Well, actually-

Nick: There are low-protein diets.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Not on purpose. The ketogenic diet is somewhat low on protein.

Heather: It is low on protein, yes.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s why it sucks.

Heather: You have to be, because it’s-

Nick: They call it moderate protein.

Heather: Moderate protein.

Nick: I watched an intermittent fasting documentary where a guy was committed to a low-protein diet and he was just eating this giant bowl of raspberries, and it was taking him all day to eat this giant bowl of raspberries.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s nuts.

Heather: And you touched upon, and you … you said, debunked the whole, “It’s bad for your kidneys. It’s bad for your bones.” Without going too deep into the science, can you just give us a little overview of why, because we hear that a lot. “Oh, it’s bad for your kidneys. Oh, it’s, you know, it’s gonna leach the calcium out of your bones.”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, the bad for your kidneys. I heard that back in grad school when … God, who was President? Ronald Reagan. You remember Ronald Reagan was President?

Nick: I remember that guy.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Back in grad-

Nick: Grade school for me.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: But I remember my professor saying, “If you eat too much protein it’s bad for your kidneys.” It’s even in textbooks, actually. In fact, it’s still in textbooks, which is kind of annoying. But the idea is this: When you consume protein, it has to be broken down. The waste product is urea, which contains ammonia. You gotta pee it out, right? It has to exit your body through your kidneys. And the idea was, “Well, you must be overworking your kidneys because you’re eating all this protein, you gotta get rid of the urea,” and the idea that “Well, your kidneys can’t handle the load. It must damage your kidneys.” Well, that makes about as much sense as, “Well, you shouldn’t do any cardio ’cause it stresses the heart, and you know what happens, the heart has to pump more, it has to … more beats.” Same silly stuff. Physicians back in the sixties and seventies were saying, “Yeah, don’t exercise so much. It’s bad for your heart.”

Why? ‘Cause exercise is a stress on your heart. But guess what, boys and girls? Anything you do to your body, your body adapts to it. If you exercise more, your heart gets stronger. If you lift more weights, your muscles get bigger. If you eat more protein, your kidneys do a great job eliminating urea. It’s what your body does. It’s like saying, “Hey, I live in south Florida. I sweat all the time. Hey, my sweat glands are working hard. Maybe it’s bad for my sweat glands.” I mean, that’s the kind of silly reasoning you see. And these are not … I mean, these are educated … I was about to say, “These are smart people.” Well, I remember my-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: You got a lot of educated dumb people who are saying that your kidneys are overworked because you gotta get rid of this waste product. Well, guess what? You’re drinking coffee, right?

Heather: Tea.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Oh, tea. Well, the act of drinking fluid will make your kidneys work harder, ’cause guess what? You gotta go to the bathroom. Well, that’s gotta be bad for your kidneys, right? So it’s this bizarre reasoning that I see amongst mainly clinicians that … it just annoys the hell out of me, ’cause I’ve heard it for three decades now, and it’s just bizarre.

Nick: But there’s a certain appeal to it beyond just the, “Oh, you know, I’m trying to look out for your interests.”

Heather: I was gonna say…

Nick: There’s something about the high-protein diet that people just … they associate with something.

Heather: Anyone who’s been in the gym and smelled that ammonia smell of that guy that’s had a little too much protein.

Nick: Well, that’s not what I was saying. What’s the resistance? What’s the resistance to protein, though?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, that’s different. They just stink. But no, it is interesting. There’s this weird anti-protein sentiment that you see … in fact, you go on social media and, not that I’m surprised anymore, but I’ll see so-called experts, people who are trained in nutrition, blah-blah-ing about the harm of protein, and including the bone demineralization thing. And what’s even more annoying about that is, guess what? We can actually measure bone. Why don’t we just get people, guys and girls who eat a lot of protein, measure their bone mineral density. It’s fine. And in the six months of data we’ve collected so far at my university in south Florida, Nova Southeastern University, these girls, they’re … one of my girls, she’s a physique athlete, she went up to 4.8 grams per kilo. I had an endurance athlete go up to about 3.1 grams per kilo. Nothing happened to their bones. If anything, there’s data suggest that increasing protein intake increases the bone mineral density of the lumbar spine. That’s lower back.

If anything … there’s two things that could happen: One, nothing will happen. Or two, it might slightly elevate bone mineral density. It’s just weird. I’ve run into this anti-protein sentiment, and I’ll even make it broader. There’s an anti-supplement sentiment typically that you see with clinical nutritionists, and I think part of it is, they’re not familiar with athletics. They don’t know what athletes do. And two, I think there’s just an inherent bias in the way they’re trained in clinical nutrition, which is much different than sports nutrition.

Nick: Sure.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: And it’s just bizarre. I mean, for myself and my friends, and you’ll meet a lot of my friends when they come in here, we laugh about it. It’s like, “Hey, that’s really funny.” But people take that stuff seriously.

Nick: Right. Right. I wonder sometimes if it’s just that the word protein is just forever associated with professional wrestlers in people’s minds like-

Heather: Right.

Nick: … if I prioritize protein, it means, therefore, I am becoming a bodybuilder, the ultimate crime.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: No, actually that’s probably pretty close to the truth, because it’s true. Protein and supplements is almost always associated first with bodybuilding and then maybe other athletes who do stuff.

Nick: … or just … we’ve run some articles recently that basically said, “As you get above age 35, or 30, or whatever, you need to be an unapologetic bodybuilder,” basically. You can resist it your whole life, but get to this point and muscle and protein have to be your priorities.

Heather: Actually, in that article I referenced earlier, you talked about elderly men and women are the age group that needs to eat higher protein.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Yes, because data is showing that elderly men and women actually become less sensitive to protein. Their intakes actually have to go up.

Heather: Interesting. Very interesting. Whenever we talk about recommended daily allowance, I always try to recommend to people that it’s the minimum line. It’s get at least this much. ‘Cause you hear people say, “Well, I’m not lifting weights. I’m not running marathons. I don’t need to eat more than this. You know, I’m fine.” You do argue that there is a case for the average Joe that’s sitting there watching football?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: And, in fact, there was a study that just came out where they got … these are 60 to 80-year-old men and women, and they were all … they split them up into the RDA group, 0.8 grams per kilo, and twice the RDA, which to me is still not that high. It’s 1.6 grams per kilo. And just the mere fact of increasing protein intake in 60 to 80 year old women, it elevated their lean body mass. But here’s the argument I hear … well, it’s not even an argument. It’s people shoot from the hip, and they’re like, “Well, okay, so they gained some lean body mass. So what? I mean, they’re 60 to 80 years old.” Well, one of the things … if you ever end up in a hospital … put it this way. Don’t end up in hospital laying in bed-

Nick: I’ll do my best.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … because you’re gonna waste away like whatever.

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: If you lose lean body mass while laying in a hospital bed, that is one of the predictors of mortality and morbidity. You will … you don’t want to lose lean body mass. The mere act of keeping lean body mass on with age … and you don’t have to be “a bodybuilder” per se, you just have to move your body … is a good thing. And protein helps.

Nick: Moving your body, you’re getting back to NEAT. I wanted to circle back around a little bit to that, because you implied there’s some connection between non-exercise-activity thermogenesis and protein. I didn’t quite understand what the connection was there.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s because a lot of us don’t understand it. We’re all in the same boat. Now, here’s what’s interesting: Obesity researchers, instead of focusing on … well, let me backtrack. If all you do is change your exercise habits alone, it’s very difficult to lose weight. If you change exercise and diet, it becomes more easy to lose weight. But the exercise part is maybe the part that we should not be focusing on, particularly with the overweight. It might be the non-exercise activity part. Because let’s face it, most of us work out 30 to 90 minutes maybe. It depends what you do. But what about the rest of the day? Unless you have an office job where you sit on your desk and type all day, maybe you should stand up and move. Maybe you should walk. Maybe it’s okay to fidget. Any movement is good. And what’s interesting is, they’ve done studies comparing non-exercise-activity … exactly, you gotta scratch … non-exercise-activity thermogenesis, and there could be as much of a difference as 2000 calories.

That means there’s some people who literally just sit still all day and other people who you’re like, “Gah, will you sit still?” But those are the people that are gonna not be fat as they get older. Imagine that. A 2000-calorie difference per day. What is that equal to? That’s equal to running 20 miles. Who the hell runs 20 miles? Well, marathoners and other than that, nobody. The non-exercise-activity thermogenesis could play a big role. And let’s say it’s not 2000. Maybe just by moving you burn an extra three to four hundred calories every day. That’s still equal to running three or four miles.

Nick: Then, maybe those people just also happen to take in more protein because they have the extra need from all that activity?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: No, it seemed … I think the idea is that protein itself may predispose you to moving more. And let me tell you, I didn’t mention … a couple of the weird … not weird, the expected side effects from these high-protein diets. I remember this one particular female subject, a tiny girl, she said, “God, I’m just hot all the time, like temperature-wise.” She says, “I’m sweating at night. I have to lay in bed and just turn the fan on ’cause literally,” she says, “I like sweat before I fall asleep.” She was eating … I mean, ’cause she was on a high-protein diet. And that was an extreme. I mean, everyone said they felt hot, but this particular person, I was like, “Wow.”

Nick: Literally steaming?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Literally. She’s like, “I’m just sweating all day.” And that’s why it’s just so hard for you to get fat eating protein, because your body just has to burn through it. And also, the … the other odd side effect with protein is that it doesn’t … people like, “Well, that’s a lot of extra calories.” Well, it’s not like it’s stimulating your appetite so that, “Now I want a doughnut,” or, “Now I want fried chicken,” or something. I think in the long run it might end up blunting your appetite a bit. You end up not eating or craving junk. I think that’s what happens with a lot of people.

Nick: Interesting. I find that when I have a shake after a workout it only makes me hungrier.

Heather: You get to a point where you just don’t want to eat anymore, and-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Is this after cardio or weight training?

Heather: Both.

Nick: Both.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Oh, it doesn’t matter.

Nick: I’m just generally a hungry individual.

Heather: Bodybuilders eat all the time. Well, one of the-

Nick: He’s sitting over there thinking, “I think he has cancer. I think he has a tumor.”

Heather: One of the questions we get asked a lot are, “What are some of the best food sources of protein?” And since we have you here and you are-

Nick: And the answer is clearly eggs.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I love eggs. No, eggs are great.

Nick: She sells me eggs.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Oh.

Heather: I’ve got lots of chickens at home.

Nick: She’s got the eggs.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: You grow chickens?

Heather: I do.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: She sells you the eggs and then she kills the chickens and sells you chicken. No.

Nick: She’s a murderer.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Actually, the animal-based proteins are the best. In fact, if I were to pick a single source I always say you can’t beat fish because you also get a lot of the healthy fat with it. It’s a great source of protein and great source of fat. But protein alone, eggs and the milk-based proteins seem to do the best. If you’re looking at muscle protein synthesis, which is … let’s face it, that’s what most of your audience cares about-

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … it would be eggs and milk, or the milk-based protein. That would be whey protein, casein protein, things like that. After that, it would be beef, chicken and pork. The vegetarian-based proteins, I would say, would fall after the animal-based proteins but, again, you could make up for the lack … I don’t want to say lack of quality. It’s more like the lower levels of some of the essential amino acids like leucine, you could just make up for it by increasing the volume you consume. If your post-workup shake is 20 grams away, you could probably do 25 to 30 grams of soy or rice protein or pea protein, something like that. But eggs and milk are great.

Heather: ‘Cause that’s another question we get, is-

Nick: Lacto-ovo.

Heather: … “I’m a vegetarian, what do I eat?” And so you’re saying eggs and milk are way up there, so even if you’re a vegetarian and you don’t eat meat, if you eat eggs and milk you can still be okay?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Wait, if you’re vegetarian, can you have eggs?

Nick: You can be a lacto-ovo vegetarian.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s like a-

Heather: Traditional vegetarian is-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s like a quasi-vegetarian.

Heather: Correct. What we think of as a vegan is a real vegetarian-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ah.

Heather: … and then, vegetarians are usually ovo-lacto vegetarians.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ah.

Nick: They get to have cheese, which makes them happier.

Heather: Some of them cheat. They’re ovo-lacto pescatarians. They eat fish, too.

Nick: One other thing that I kept on seeing associated with you online is the Antonio adage, which is, “If it helps or has a neutral effect, try it.”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Just frickin’ do it.

Nick: Right. And I want to help people figure out how to put this into action, because everybody fancies themself an expert right now. And we’ve added so many references to so many articles, because people want to see them. Everybody wants to go click and look at their little abstract or read the whole damn study and figure out themselves how to put it into action in their life.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right.

Nick: How do you put that into action, that adage?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, what’s interesting is, if you go outside of these supplements that have the most research: protein, creatine, caffeine, beta-alanine, there’s this laundry list of supplements where hmm, there’s not a lot of data, but there is data. For instance, branched-chain amino acids, citrulline, taurine-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: There’s all sorts of them. People say, “Well, should I take it?” And I always say, “Well, the adage is, ‘If it helps or has a neutral effect, try it’.” Or the other one, which is … I’ll make an allusion to a book I was just reading. I don’t know if you guys are fans of the Jack Reacher series, but-

Nick: I’ve read a couple of those, sure.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I love Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. I was reading his latest book, and there was a great saying in it. It was … and I was thinking, “Wow, this applies to supplements.” “It works more than never, but less than always.” And that really applies to a lot of supplements. More than never, less than always. Branched-chain amino acids. I remember getting in a discussion with a friend of mine. They’re like, “Well, of course, branched chains suck, because why don’t you just have whey protein, ’cause whey stimulates muscle protein synthesis better than branched chains?” I’m like, “You’re absolutely right, it does. However, they’re not mutually exclusive propositions.” Can branched-chain amino acids stimulate MPS or muscle protein synthesis? Yeah, but not as much. Again, it’s more than never but less than always. Also, branched-chain amino acids have a role in lowering delayed-onset muscle soreness. And, believe it or not, 99.9 percent of athletes who do a performance sport don’t want to be sore. That’s a reason to take branched chains.

You know what? I don’t want to be sore, ’cause when I go to batting practice next day, it’s hard to swing a bat when your lats are sore. Every supplement has its role or value. There just has to be context to it. And I think a lot of people make the mistake of conflating everything with bodybuilding nutrition when, in fact, there are people who just want to do a triathlon faster. I mean, there are people who buy products at Bodybuilding.com who maybe don’t want to gain lean mass, they just want to perform better. And you gotta take that in account. But the idea that if it helps or has a neutral effect, or if it’s more than never and less than always, applies really to a lot of things. ‘Cause even caffeine, which I love … I love caffeine and I love creatine … there are non-responders to caffeine and creatine. But again, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Well, here’s what interesting, now that we have data on it. Worst thing for creatine non-responders is a non-response. That makes sense.

Well, now we’re finding out that caffeine, there’s a gene for caffeine, that you’re either a fast or slow metabolizer. And oddly enough, we’re finding out that if you’re a slow metabolizer it may actually hinder performance. It gets a little tricky. And people say, “Well, caffeine’s a drug. It’s not technically a food substrate like creatine. Now, does the adage apply? “If it helps or has a neutral effect?” Well, oddly enough, with caffeine I think there’s a self-selection factor. People figure out, they’re like… And I remember, I thought people would be lying to me. They’re like, “Ah, when I take caffeine nothing happens. I don’t feel anything. In fact, sometimes I feel worse.” I’m like, “You gotta be lying. That’s baloney.” And now the data on this gene for caffeine, it’s like, wow, slow metabolizers of caffeine actually perform exercise worse, which is … I’m like wow, that’s really odd. I mean, what other genetic factors influence exercise performance as it applies to nutrition?

Nick: Interesting. They’re worse in that they are too jittery to perform, to hold the barbell, or-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: No. Actually, time trials on a cycle. The responders do better cycling, there’s a group that are neutral, and then there’s actually a small group that gets worse, which I find really odd. But I guess, that’s when you hear people say, “Hey, caffeine does nothing for me,” and I’m like, “You’re lying. It’s gotta do something for you. It does something to me.” Every morning. I need it.

Nick: How much we talking about here?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: A lot.

Nick: A lot.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I got up at 3:45 to come here.

Heather: That’s what I’m more interested in is the high dosage of caffeine. What’s the lethal dose there?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, actually there’s data on caffeine overdose, roughly … I think the lowest I’ve seen is, you could die on 10 grams, which is 10,000 mg.

Heather: Yep.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Even some guy apparently wanted to take 20,000 mg. Why, I don’t know, but he ended up in the emergency room.

Heather: That’s crazy.

Nick: How do you control the experiment that is your life when you want to figure out if something is working? Say that you buy a bottle of branched-chain amino acids or glutamine, and you want to be able to tell, “Okay, is this the thing that’s actually making a difference?”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: And the easy answer to that is, you actually don’t know, ’cause there is a placebo effect. In fact, the placebo effect is real. Let me tell you a quick story. This one study where they told the subjects, “You’ll get a placebo, middle dose caffeine, high dose caffeine,” but they told them, they said, “Okay, now you’re getting a placebo. Oh, now you’re getting a high dose. Now, you’re getting the middle dose,” but they actually got the placebo every time. Subjects performed better when they knew they were getting more caffeine, just because they were told. The idea that there’s a true placebo effect is real. But here’s the kicker: When you compare a supplement to a placebo, which is almost every study, and the supplement does better, then there is a real effect. Now, how do you know personally if there’s an effect?

Well, if you’re in a podium sport or a finish line sport … because you run faster, bike faster, swim faster or jump higher-

Nick: Feel better at the end of the face, that’s what I feel like …

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s another one, you feel better at the end of the race. If you’re in a physique sport, you don’t know. It’s a guess because it’s how you look.

Heather: Well, and that’s exactly why this sport has so many followers with so many different ideas, and … everyone’s a researcher now. They’re pulling up their own study or their own proof of whatever they think is correct.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right.

Heather: And I always turn to the placebo effect as, “Hey, even if it’s just a placebo, that’s still an effect.”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: It’s still an effect.

Heather: It’s still, you know?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: It’s a good effect.

Nick: One thing I wanted to ask you is, once upon a time and still … I would say still now, it was all about, “What is in your pre-workout? What is in your post? It’s like, “Ooh, look, we have citrulline, ooh, look, we have probiotics in your multivitamin, but it’s these tiny little dustines-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right.

Nick: And now, everybody’s into transparency and clinical doses. Does it end up being much better in the age of the clinical dose?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: What’s the question again?

Nick: I don’t know. It seems like some supplement companies are all about how much rather than just what now. Does it end up being demonstrably better?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I think … well, there’s a saying in the drug industry or pharmacy, it’s drug, dose, duration. In this case, it’s supplement, dose, duration. But you can’t do three S’s or … whatever. Drug, dose, duration. Supplement, what’s the dose, what’s duration? And dose is key. I mean, a lot of products are under dosed, and that can be a problem. Now, if they’re under dosed, could you take them long enough to get a dose? Ah, conceivably you could.

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: But let’s take the simple one, caffeine. You have to dose properly to get an effect with caffeine, and the low end of the dose is about 3 mg per kg. Anything less than that, you probably won’t get an effect. In that case, dosing is key. An amino acid like L-citrulline, dosing is key. You need to get gram amounts of it, not milligram amounts. If you look at some of these pre-workout products, it’s milligram amounts. I think it’s important that you work with a dose that at least shows some clinical promise. Otherwise, it is, it’s kind of a fairy dusting, which is not fair to the consumer.

Nick: Right. Right. And where do you think timing fits in the priorities, then, if somebody is trying to get the most of a supplement that they spent their money on?

Nick: … “and the sources that I’m aiming for.” At what point do you need to start to get strategic about timing? Oh, I have to get it before or after my workout …

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right. Well, I think the challenge with timing is that the original timing studies were actually on carbohydrate, not protein. And we do know that particularly if you do prolonged cardio or you do two-a-days, the timing becomes critical because you gotta recover for the next training bout-

Nick: Right. Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … which is in the same day. A lot of elite endurance athletes do that. Football players do it when they do two-a-days and things like that. Now, in terms of protein timing, this is where it gets tricky, and I think there’s been a lot of confusion. Let’s say you need 200 grams of protein a day or 200-pound male or female, and you split it up during the day. Now, what do you do post workout? The recommendation I give is, we’ll get 20 to 40 grams of protein a day. And I remember, a couple years ago, people were saying, “Oh, the timing, it doesn’t matter, blah, blah, blah. You could just go home, hang out, take a shower, and then you could eat your protein later, because what matters is total protein per day,” which is correct. Total protein matters per day, but you still have to distribute it. But that’s not even the argument I would make. The argument I would make is this: Are you ever helped by not eating? Does not eating ever help you? The answer’s no, it never helps you. Why would anyone choose to not eat? If you’re done your workout and you’re driving home … let’s say you got a 30-minute drive home or whatever. I mean, here you probably have a three-hour drive home. Just kidding.

Nick: 30 minutes.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: 30 minutes. Why not do the shake immediately post workout? Because not doing the shake confers zero benefit. And this is where I differ from a lot of scientists: I tend to take … not I tend, I do … I take a very pragmatic approach to this. It’s like, is there a benefit or not benefit to doing? If the benefit is marginal, it’s still a benefit. If there’s a benefit to not eating, well, then, I’d like to know what that benefit is, because I haven’t found it yet, and that’s where the protein timing issue gets really muddled in that people are like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter what I do.” Well, no, it does matter what you do, because not eating confers nothing.

Nick: No, I like that approach. I mean, the thing I tell people is, “If it’s an effective part of your ritual-”

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Yes.

Nick: “… if having your post-workout shake helps you remember to have a shake period, then …”

Heather: That’s right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … it helps you remember to eat protein.

Nick: Then get in that anabolic window unapologetically at that point, right?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right. But no, here’s what’s funny: The anabolic window, let’s say, stretches for hours, right? And the idea was, well, because the anabolic window could stretch for hours, it doesn’t matter what you do immediately post workout; when, in fact, that’s the wrong way of thinking. Well, to me, it’s the wrong way of thinking. The right way to look at it is, well, if the anabolic window is that long, take advantage of every frickin’ part of the window.

Nick: Right.

Heather: That’s right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Why would you ignore it?

Heather: Load up at the beginning of the window.

Nick: Get two meals in it.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right.

Nick: Exactly.

Heather: You touched on that recommendation that we hear a lot, that 20 to 40 grams per meal.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right.

Heather: Another question that we get asked all the time is, how much is too much to eat in any one sitting when it comes to protein?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ok. Good question. How much is too much to eat? The answer to that is, nobody really knows.

Heather: Ah.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That’s why … we know the minimum to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. I’d say go with the 20 grams. That’ll work for most guys and girls. The maximum is unknown but, again, if … let’s say you’re dealing with a … let’s deal with the extreme, the 400-pound sumo wrestler. 400 grams of protein. He’s gotta eat a lot. He’s splitting up his protein throughout the day. Is he gonna go by 30 grams a meal?

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: He’d be eating 35 meals. I mean, come on. And even take an NFL lineman who weighs 300 pounds. To get 300 grams of protein, 30 grams a meal? I mean, you’re crazy. And here’s the thing: I mean, I don’t want to get into a lot of hard-core biology, but think of this from an evolutionary standpoint. Human beings evolved, basically, to withstand starvation. And then they would gorge, if food was plentiful. Now, imagine you’ve been starving for two days. You finally catch a deer. You want to eat, and your caveman buddy says, “You know what? 30 grams of protein, that’s it. Stop.” And you’re hungry. You just want to eat and eat and eat. You want the whole deer leg. It makes sense, from a biological standpoint, that your body can take in and utilize a lot of protein, certainly a lot more than 30 grams. That’s nothing. That’s a chicken breast. I mean, that’s nothing. I go to Popeye’s, have chicken breast, wings and legs and …

Nick: Right. It’s doing something. We just don’t necessarily know what the rest of the protein is doing?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, you’re utilizing it for something. And here’s the thing: If humans have adapted to survive famine … and obviously, none of us undergo famine, but what happens when it’s feast, you starve, you feast, you starve? There’s gotta be a mechanism for your body to utilize 100 grams of protein in one sitting. Otherwise, we’d all be dead as a species.

Nick: Right. Right.

Heather: Welp, that makes perfect sense.

Nick: Now, you talked about high protein for the person who’s 60 to 80. I also saw on your Instagram feed the other day something about creatine for the person who’s 60 to 80. I know you’re a big defender, or champion of creatine as a supplement.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I love creatine.

Nick: Do you think we’re getting to the point where the research is stacking up it’s going to be considered a vitamin at some point, or is it too tainted as a sports supplement still?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I don’t think it’ll be considered a vitamin, because technically you don’t need it-

Nick: Right. Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … and you don’t get a deficiency symptom. However, it may actually be healthier than taking a vitamin. My wife and I used to coach travel softball down in south Florida, and when my kids were young they played softball for about seven, eight years. I had my daughter, who was a pitcher, take creatine when she was little. I mean, ’cause it’s a power sport. Everyone should take creatine from a very young age to very old age, and I always say even if you don’t care about the muscle stuff, ’cause a lot of people like, “Well, I’m not a bodybuilder,” blah, blah, blah. That’s fine. Take it for your brain. There’s good data showing that it helps memory. It serves as a fuel, actually, for your brain. That is reason enough alone to take it. In fact, there’s data that suggests that for … if you compete in a sport where head trauma is a possibility … soccer, the fight sports, mixed martial arts, boxing, football … take creatine for your brain. It protects it.

Heather: Interesting. Now, just out of curiosity, ’cause you said, at the very beginning, that you discourage treating food like math or doing math to try to figure out what to eat.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Nutrition should not be about mathematics.

Heather: That’s what you said. If someone is not a food-scale person, they’re not weighing every single calorie-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Me.

Nick: Me, too.

Heather: Can you … how would you … what kind of signs would you look for that hey, maybe I need to increase the protein, hey, maybe I’m getting a little too high. Are there certain signs, symptoms that people can look for?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, to me, I think it’s a question of … if you make the right food choices, you actually don’t even have to count protein grams. I think if most people, let’s say, eat three meals a day and then have two snacks … technically, that’s five meals a day … but let’s say in each of those meals they get 20 grams of protein. That is actually enough for most people, and guys, the serving size will be greater than, let’s say, girls. And the emphasis would be on whole foods and whole protein and things like that. And if you need to do one shake post workout, that, to me, is fine. And you don’t have to count anything. You’re just looking at the kinds of foods you eat. What’s interesting is, a lot of people even have a hard time with that. That’s some simple stuff.

Heather: You’ll notice someone get cranky ’cause they don’t have enough sugar, but people get cranky if they don’t have enough protein. Maybe you?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I get cranky if I don’t have enough coffee and white rice. Those are two of my favorites there. People think … you know, it’s funny, on Twitter … it’s really funny … this guy accused me of being anti-carb. They’re like, “You do all this protein research. You’re such an anti-carb person.” I’m thinking, “Has he ever sat down and had dinner with me?” I eat like a bowl of rice. I grew up eating rice all day. I was like, “This guy’s crazy. He’s crazy.”

Nick: One other thing I wanted to ask. The winds of favor are always blowing for or against one supplement or the other. It seems like branched-chain amino acids are really popular, and then there’ll be a community that’s totally anti. And glutamine is one that we hear about all the time, where it was the be-all, end-all. And now, when you run a glutamine piece, everybody says, “Glutamine is an absolute scam.” Now, you-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I don’t know if I’d use scam.

Nick: Or, “It does nothing unless you’re a burn patient,” is what we always hear.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: What if you’re a burn patient?

Nick: Right, exactly. But you’ve written in defense of glutamine in the past, and I wanted to know where you stand on that particular supplement, ’cause it’s one that bodybuilders are notorious for taking.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: You know what’s interesting about glutamine, I actually published a review paper on it probably 20 years ago, saying that it had a role with mainly protecting the immune system. Now, I’ve always put a caveat to using glutamine, and the caveat is this: Unless you’re training your ass off, it’s not gonna do anything. When I say training your ass off, is it the equivalent to you running 50 to 80 miles a week. So… and it’s easy to quantify endurance stuff, because it’s mileage. I don’t know how you quantify that with bodybuilding. Is it more volume, more sets, are they doing two-a-days? If you’re training your butt off, then maybe glutamine will help just from the standpoint of protecting your immune system. And now that we’re learning more about how your immune system is affected by your gut and your gut bacteria and all that stuff that I don’t understand … I’m trying to understand it … maybe glutamine plays a role, because it serves as fuel for your GI tract or your intestine. I wouldn’t discount it.

I would just say it’s … again, it’s context. It serves a use for a small subset of athletes who work their tail off. I would say if you’re grandma walking your poodle three times a week for 30 minutes in Boca Raton, Florida, you don’t need glutamine.

Nick: Unless you’re also a burn victim, right?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: If your dog’s a burn victim-

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: … then give the dog glutamine.

Nick: Are there any other supplements like that, that come to mind where you think, “You know what? It has value, but maybe only if you are really pushing it.”

Heather: Only if you’re in this top one percent.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, I think branched chains are one of those, has limited value. But, again, if not being sore is something you’re trying to avoid, you don’t want to be sore, I think it has utility there. A lot of the single amino acids like just leucine alone, taurine alone, I mean, there’s data that show it can help either with muscle protein synthesis or with performance or something. But again, the utility is limited, but it doesn’t mean it’s useless. And I think it’s weird, in this industry and sometimes in the science industry, people paint this black and white or … it’s a zero-sum game. Well, if you do this you can’t do that.

Well, I remember, when I gave my talk on protein, one of the criticisms was, “Well, if you eat a high-protein diet, it limits the intake of fiber,” and I’m thinking, “How the hell does it do that? So if I eat a steak, I can’t have broccoli with it?” This either/or mentality not only exists with clinicians, but it even exists with scientists sometimes. It’s the, “Don’t take branched chains, ’cause whey protein’s better.” Well, it depends what your goal is. And I guarantee you that, if you’re riding a bike for four hours, you’re not sucking down whey protein. Well, maybe you are, but you’ll be throwing up. You’re probably taking a branch chain amino acid cocktail with caffeine and sugar or whatnot. Context is critical for a lot of these supplements.

Nick: Definitely. Branched chain amino acids and endurance athletes have an interesting relationship, too. I feel I don’t know a lot of endurance athletes who take them religiously, but after I started working here I remember thinking, “Bodybuilding and branch chain amino acids doesn’t really make sense,” because they’re getting so much protein. But for an endurance athlete, branch chain amino acids seem to make a lot more sense.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: It does. In fact, that’s where I’ve seen … oddly enough, in south Florida, most of its use. And usually as something they consume during, particularly, a bike ride. It’s hard to do it during a run, because you’d have to carry stuff. I mean, runners-

Nick: I chew them during mountain races.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Ooh.

Nick: It tastes like shit. But I find them incredibly effective as just a-

Heather: He’s a weirdo. It’s okay.

Nick: Or I’ll swallow a capsule, or if my throat’s really dry-

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: During?

Nick: … ’cause I’m thirsty, I’ll just … during a race.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Then you chug it?

Nick: There’s little pills.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Oh, you don’t even wash it down-

Nick: I’ll try, but depends on how much water I have.

Nick: Exactly.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Oh, wow. Interesting.

Nick: But, I mean, within the context of competition or long training, you think that’s the place where that can be most beneficial?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I think it is. Or within the … competition, hard training, because the next day you don’t want to be crazy sore.

Nick: Right.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: That way, you could go out and bike or swim or whatever you’re doing.

Nick: Right. And the soreness connection is one that we have used a lot over the years in articles here. Is that … how do you benefit from that? It’s not like taking Tylenol or something …

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Right. Well, the NSAIDs are different, because the NSAIDs may actually inhibit recovery long term.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: In south Florida, I actually … I’ll use the word compete … I race in standup paddling races. They range anywhere from three miles. The longest race I’ve done is a race around Key West Island. It took almost three hours to do. You’re pretty beat up. And even training for it, you get beat up. And the last thing you want to be … at least for me, and maybe it’s a personal thing … to me, being sore carries no value, ’cause it inhibits the way you train. And I think when physique athletes think of soreness, they think of, “Oh, I worked out hard, I feel good-”

Heather: Growth.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: “… it’s good.” And there is some evidence to show that damage is needed for producing hypertrophy, whereas for 99% of sports, it’s not important. You don’t want to be sore, because it inhibits the way you practice. Whether you’re playing basketball, volleyball, football, rugby, lacrosse, being sore is a bad thing, actually, particularly when you’re practicing a skill. And to me, one of the hardest skills is either pitching a baseball or hitting a baseball.

Nick: Terrible at both of them.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, if you’re sore, then you’re gonna be really bad at both of them.

Nick: Exactly.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Those are some circumstances or sports where it would be quite helpful.

Nick: And if somebody’s looking to capitalize on it, is it important to take it before?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: I think before and/or during would help. And I think, again, the dosing is probably more important. I would say 5 to 15 grams, and just play around with the dosing. You can probably figure out what works best for you. Because I think one of the things people don’t take in account is GI distress. Lot of people … like for instance, for me, pre-workout, I actually can’t take anything other than caffeine. Anything else, I get an upset stomach. To me, I’m not taking protein, I’m not taking branched chains or anything like that. But in the middle of something, I can consume stuff. For whatever weird reason, I don’t get an upset stomach. But if I do it right before, 20 to 30 minutes before, I’m like, “Uh, I just don’t …”

Nick: Even electrolytes or something?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Yeah, it’s … I gotta be in the middle of it, for some reason. And obviously people experiment and they figure this out.

Nick: Sure. I’d like to have a big sandwich, like a really long hoagie.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Is there at least one gram per pound of protein?

Nick: Absolutely. I order it special …

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Good. Then you’re on track.

Nick: Anything else, Heather?

Heather: No, I think he answered all the questions, yeah.

Nick: We’ve covered an incredible amount of information here. Thank you for coming and talking with us.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, thank you.

Heather: Thank you.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Thank you.

Nick: And we’ll see if we can … where do people find you online if they want to get in touch?

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: Well, you can find me online. Actually, I’m the CEO of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Website is ISSN.net, and you can find me online there. You can get my email. But I do want to say, our 15th annual conference, it’s all sports nutrition, little bit of exercise training, is June 7th to 9th, Clearwater Beach, Florida, next year. If you want to go to the beach, ’cause I’ve seen the beaches here, they’re not so pretty.

Nick: We have a beautiful river.

Heather: Yes. Yes.

Jose Antonio, Ph.D.: You got a nice river. Come to Clearwater Beach next June, and it’s sports nutrition science for 2-1/2 full days. It’s a lot of fun, and if you’ve ever been to a science conference, one of the first things people say is, “God, science people are boring as hell. It’s just boring, boring, boring.” Our conference is not boring. You’d love it.